St. Teresa Of Avila's Love Poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar

Teresa of Avila was a nun
In Catholic Spain in the sixteenth century
Beginning at a time when the protestant
Reformation took place in the Europe.
A mystic poet she became in due course.
An erotic poet she grew at the end.
She wrote poetry, essays and letters.
She is known for her dedicated love.1

Teresa as young was striking in look
With round face, broad forehead and white skin.
Eyes were utter black and eyebrows quite thick.
White teeth and the black hair adorned her face.
She was eager to read romantic novels
At her teenage and slowly moved towards
Reading and writing spiritual matters.
At the age of twenty she became a nun. 2

Before that after she lost her mother,
She was affectionate with her age sons
Of her aunt and over friendly with one
Frivolous guy in her motherless period,
To which she got opposition at home.
Her early nunnery life was not rosy
With ailment, which she overcame later
In sheer devotion to Jesus and service 3


Love of god will wound you delectably
Love of sex will wound you delectably
There is a thin margin detectable
Between agape love and erotic love.
Erotic love is as strong as mad love.
Erotic love between man and woman
And human and God aren't different
Except the objectivity displayed. 4

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold,
And at the iron's point there seemed to be
A little fire. He appeared to me to be
Thrusting it at times into my heart,
And to pierce my very entrails;
When he drew it out, he seemed to draw them
Out also, and to leave me all on fire
With a great love for God." Teresa writes.5

"The pain was so great, that it made me moan;
And yet so surpassing was the sweetness
Of this excessive pain, that I could not wish
To be rid of it. The soul is satisfied
Now with nothing less than God. The pain
Is not bodily, but spiritual; though
The body has its share in it, a large one.
A caressing of love between soul and God."6

"Already I gave myself completely,
And have changed in such a way that my beloved
Is for me and I am for my beloved."
She writes in a mystical expression,
"He pierced me with an arrow laced with
The herbs of love and my soul became one
With her Creator; I no longer want
Another love, myself given to my God."7

When my mouth touched His, I became invisible,
The way the earth would if the sun took it
Into its arms. This ecstatic death I know.
How do we make love to God or the soul
Make love to God? The heart has divine instincts;
It just needs to be tuned." "I slept with my God;
Now all that is luminous I know we conceived"
Thus, she loved no man but God in man's place.8

‘I only made myself appear separate
From God, from True Nature in order
That I could experience being His lover.
In the ecstatic rapture as I dance
Or shake or pray or sing or orgasm
I merge with Him. And at that moment
I'm the lover, the loved and the Source of all love.'
She left to posterity many convents. 9

In 1622, forty years after her death,
Teresa was canonized by Pope Gregory XV.
Patroness and Doctor ecclesiae
Are other titles she was adorned with.
She is revered as the Doctor of Prayer.
The mysticism in her works exerted
A formative influence upon many
Theologians of the next centuries. 10
08.11.2020